You’ve probably heard the term ‘CCaaS’ before, but do you know what it means? CCaaS stands for Contact Center as a Service. The term describes a Customer Experience (CX) solution that provides all the tools you need to operate a fully-functional, omni-channel cloud contact center.
CCaaS uses a Software as a Service (SaaS) payment model that lets an organization pay only for the features it actually uses. A CCaaS solution provides flexibility, scalability and reliability; read on to find out how.
/f/152969/1721x1237/fafc7a40c2/woman-agent-success-icons-right_light.png){kind=icon}
/f/152969/1721x1157/5396709961/woman-contact-center-customer-satisfaction-2.png)
What is CCaaS?
SaaS is a way of providing software through the cloud. Rather than purchasing a piece of software, SaaS allows users to ‘subscribe’ to that software. And that’s not all: the regular fee that customers pay covers not only software, but also support, hosting, continuous updates and new features. One fee, unlimited potential. CCaaS is a subset of SaaS that deals specifically with customer communications.
More than ever, CCaaS is becoming the default option for contact centers. On-premise contact centers are being left behind. What key features of the CCaaS solution set it apart?
The Key Features of a CCaaS Solution
A CCaaS solution provides exceptional flexibility, functionality, and reliability. What aspects of a CCaaS solution make this possible?
A CCaaS solution is cloud-based. This means it can be accessed within a browser, via any internet-enabled device. Users can work from anywhere, securely.
A CCaaS solution is constantly updated. When new features are rolled out, they become instantly available, without the need for downtime. From Artificial Intelligence (AI) to the Metaverse, a CCaaS solution ensures that you get the best of new technologies.
On top of these innate features of a CCaaS solution, a leading provider should be able to offer the following benefits:
Leading CCaaS solutions are omni-channel by design. This means that your customers can contact you whenever, wherever and over any channel they choose. Every contact is brought into a single interface, for a truly channel-agnostic contact center.
The contact center runs on data. A leading CCaaS solution integrates via API with any third-party solution or system of record, for a truly omni-data contact center. Agents are empowered with customer data from across your entire CX ecosystem, all in a single pane of glass.
Agents are your most valuable asset. A leading CCaaS solution should allow for inbuilt Workforce Engagement Management, allowing for improvements to agent experience like automated scheduling and Quality Management. CCaaS combats agent attrition, while providing the best quality of experience for your customers.
A CCaaS solution offers the potential to scale in a way on-premise solutions are not able to. Hosted in data centers, a CCaaS solution allows you to add new users at the click of a button, scaling up and down to match customer demand. Your business will always be accessible to customers, no matter the situation.
Customer trust is invaluable. Leading CCaaS solutions provide security tools to ensure customer data is kept on a need-to-know basis, no matter how distributed your workforce.
CCaaS Benefits and User Success Stories
A CCaaS solution opens up a whole world of potential. Here is a snapshot of the benefits CCaaS can provide to your organization:
Scalability – a leading CCaaS solution lets you add new users at the click of a button, with no new infrastructure required.
Utilities provider UK Power Networks faces regular surges in demand when storms disrupt its nationwide infrastructure. With a CCaaS solution, it is able to scale instantly to meet 10,000%+ surges in contact demand, ensuring that every customer gets the answers they need when they most need them.
Omni-channel – leading CCaaS solutions allow customers to switch seamlessly between channels, for a truly omni-channel customer experience.
Healthcare provider HUC uses a CCaaS solution to let patients and medical practitioners to switch instantly from voice to video. This requires no additional apps or interfaces and allows for more consistent diagnoses.
Flexible – a leading CCaaS solution allows you to rapidly respond to changing circumstances. Whether this means updating your reporting to reflect changed priorities, or allowing your colleagues to work from anywhere, CCaaS allows you to present a unified contact center, no matter how complex your business or workforce is.
The Rail Delivery Group used a CCaaS solution to migrate its entire contact center to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing customer contact to continue during unprecedented circumstances.
Powered by AI – leading CCaaS solutions incorporate AI at every level. From intelligent chatbots that leverage Generative AI, to contact routing supported by voice recognition, CCaaS solutions bring AI-powered efficiencies to your customer communications.
One government agency leveraged its CCaaS solution’s inbuilt AI to automate customer contacts. By shifting callers into an AI-powered webchat. Of the contacts who were sent to chat, 70% were successfully automated, reducing the pressure on human agents during times of peak demand.
Cloud Migration for CCaaS
These ‘on-prem’ contact centers come with a host of problems:
Constrained by physical space: on-prem servers need to be stored somewhere, and this can be costly!
Maintenance: organizations need to have their own IT teams, and spend money on maintenance.
Capacity is fixed: if an organization wants to scale its contact center, it needs to purchase and install an entirely new server.
On-prem solutions can’t scale as quickly or flexibly as CCaaS solutions. If these servers experience a technical malfunction, bringing those servers back online is costly and complicated. Responsibility for fixing the solution falls entirely on the business and its IT team.
If an organization doesn’t have an on-premise solution, it might have either a hosted contact center or a managed contact center.
A hosted contact center involves a server reserved solely for an organization, located either in its offices, or in a data center. In both cases, the organization is responsible for the management of the server.
A managed contact center also involves a server in a remote location, dedicated solely to one organization. A managed services provider is responsible for support, management, and maintenance.
Both hosted and managed contact centers suffer from the same limitations as on-premise: space limitations, inflated maintenance and operational costs, and fixed capacity.
By contrast, CCaaS solution needs no on-premise infrastructure. Contact center software is hosted in a data center; a highly secure facility, equipped with a massive amount of extra server capacity and staffed by skilled teams of engineers.
Data centers:
Allow for unlimited spare capacity in the event of a demand surge
Cover all server maintenance, including heat management
Offer organizations dedicated space, with room for flexible expansion
Making the leap to CCaaS is the logical next step.
CCaaS Possibilities
With CCaaS, the possibilities are endless. Discover more with Content Guru’s resource library:
/f/152969/1280x960/b9472e024c/whitepaper_ai.png)
Whitepaper
To Boldly Go: The Future of AI in the Contact Center
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping the contact center. AI is finding applications in a vast range of different sectors and is expected to boost global GDP by $15 trillion by 2030.
/f/152969/1280x960/faaecdbcc1/whitepaper_business_continuity.png)
Whitepaper
The Four Pillars of Evergreen CX: Four Steps to Future-Proof Your Contact Center
The Customer Experience (CX) space is constantly evolving. From changing consumer tastes to regulatory shifts to exciting new AI technologies, staying ahead of the competition and delighting customers is more challenging than ever. You need to do more than transform your CX; you need an evergreen transformation, which keeps your whole technology stack on the cutting edge.
/f/152969/1280x960/ea22b3a36e/whitepaper_key_kpis.png)
Whitepaper
Keeping Up With the KPIs
To get the most from your agents, you need to understand how they perform, and this requires a detailed knowledge of your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
Modernizing Customer Experience through the storm® CCaaS Solution
If you like the sound of a CCaaS solution, Content Guru is ready to help. Content Guru’s cloud-based CCaaS solution, storm®, provides a flexible, reliable, and scalable alternative to on-premise contact centers.
storm is used by over 1000 enterprise-scale public and private organizations in over 50 countries, and is trusted by leading global brands to meet all their CCaaS needs.
storm® CONTACT™
The world’s leading high-volume CCaaS solution, delivering reliable, scalable, cloud-based customer communications.
storm® CONTACT:SOCIAL™
Create digital Customer Experience; integrate social media channels into your contact center with a truly omni-channel CCaaS solution.
storm® VIEW™
Get in-depth insights into your CCaaS solution with a fully integrated reporting suite.
brain®
The power of AI in the palm of your hand; make Intelligent Automation a key part of your continuously updated CCaaS suite.
Discover CCaaS Yourself
Is your organization ready to make the leap to CCaaS? Do you want to see a CCaaS solution in action? Fill out the form below to book a zero-obligation consultation with one of Content Guru’s CX experts.
/f/152969/5000x3184/1da8c30b3a/laptop_phone_storm.png)